My girlfriend and I are trying to plan a trip to Japan for about two weeks in December and it'd be awesome to see the Nissan factory. She wants to go to the Hello Kitty theme park so I figure going to Nissan would be a good trade.

Do you know if there's anything online for the factory tours or is it something you can only setup in person?

I just got back from my trip (also 2 weeks with the in-laws). I saw one leaf at a dealership and that was it. I did bring back that two page add though. My wife called Nissan Japan to ask about a rear seat seatbelt extension (answer no of course) and then gave the operator an earful about how hard it was to buckle up our first-grader in the rear seat.

Devin wrote:My girlfriend and I are trying to plan a trip to Japan for about two weeks in December and it'd be awesome to see the Nissan factory. She wants to go to the Hello Kitty theme park so I figure going to Nissan would be a good trade.

Do you know if there's anything online for the factory tours or is it something you can only setup in person?

I contacted Nissan HQ yesterday about arranging a factory tour before departing this coming Sunday. Unfortunately, Thu and Fri this week are holidays, and Saturday is already booked up.

That means I'll have to do the tour on another trip, unfortunately. For others thinking about this, they said you can book your tour up to three months in advance.

I also visited a dealership today; I took lots of pictures; a few small differences with the Japanese Leafs vs. the American ones (driver on right hand side, console buttons in Japanese; etc. I took some pictures of the experience--as you might imagine, the Japanese car-buying experience is, well, Japanese!

That's great to hear that they'll have a translator/tour in English. When I visited one of the Oppama plants in late 2003, Nissan was no longer doing English tours but I lucked out. I posted about my story at http://my350z.com/forum/2003-2009-nissa ... ost1390402. At the time, I owned two Nissans, an 02 Maxima and an 04 350Z.

For car enthusiasts visiting Japan, in the past, I'd highly recommend coordinating it with http://www.tokyo-motorshow.com/en/index.html. Unfortunately, the show has gotten a lot smaller over the years. I've been to TMS in 03, 05 and 09. 09's was the smallest by far and unlike previous years, most foreign (to Japan) automakers didn't show up. It used to always be held at Makuhari Messe. Now it's being held at Tokyo Big Sight.

I'd be hearing for years that the TMS following 09 would be smaller but http://www.tokyo-motorshow.com/en/booth/ shows that at least foreign automakers are back. Besides the cars, there are lots of booth babes and also a LOT of suppliers (e.g. Calsonic, Denso, Jatco, etc.). It is kinda neat to see cut open parts such as differentials and transmissions. It's also neat to see how many different vendors supply parts to automakers. I've seen displays of instrument clusters for lots of different cars all being supplied by one company. At bigger TMSes, car enthusiasts should allow for at least 2 days to see everything, esp. if interested in lots of things.

Thought I'd give this thread a bump to thank the folks at Nissan Oppama, especially Ms. Yayoi Tooyama, for making my visit to the factory today (that's tomorrow for you folks) really special. They provided a translator and even paused at times to wait for a Leaf to come down the line to show me the inverter assembly, battery pack placement, etc.

I'd suggest that anyone who is a Leaf fan and has a bucket of extra airline miles take a trip over here and visit the birthplace of your Leaf. It's a simple hour long rail journey from Ginza and if I can do it, so can you. Just make sure you have your Suica card, pocket wifi ($100 for two weeks has saved my life more than once) and tablet/phone of your choice (Samsung Galaxy Tab 7, here). Although they say it's OK for kids, my son and daughter would have freaked out and been eaten by a robot (who plays music, cool) 'cause it.is..loud. They're over at the Emerging Science Museum, and from the look of things out my 34th Floor window, about to get rained on.

For those waiting for your Leaves, production is now 1-7 Leaves-Other Models. That's down from 1-5. There were a whole bunch of Leafes awaiting transport. I mean a whole bunch.